Many Angry Gerbils

Dannatt on the Afghan Resistance

This is from the same speech. Again, another fairly sober and reasonable analysis. While one does not have to subscribe to it entirely, it is refreshing to hear him acknowledge that the word 'Taliban' is almost meaningless now. In Afghanistan, according to Dannatt,

Again our adversaries are also quite complex and I would prefer to once more use the term militant and to be careful not to demonise the people we fight in Afghanistan.  There is a lazy tendency for them all to be lumped under the term “Taliban”, but it is not as simple as that. Yes, there is a hard core of Islamist extremists of varied ethnic and national origin, but the great majority of the people we are engaged with are those who are fighting with the Taliban for financial, social and tribal reasons.   So we must beware of tarring them all with the same brush, as I am sure that one day we will need to deal with and reconcile the majority of these people.  And the character of the people who oppose here is different to that of the people in Iraq. Afghans are a hardy people, who respect force and the warrior ethos. They are generally more impressed by a company of infantry, fighting bravely with bayonets fixed than by high tech ISTAR and offensive support.  Their current choice is to fight in the cultivated areas where the visibility and fields of view can be measured in tens of metres, where basic skills, not technical prowess are most important. Indeed, it is a form of operation that our forefathers would recognise from the Normandy bocage – indeed on their part it is clever, because we are denied the hi-tech advantages of stand off and range.

Dannatt's remarks on Iraq still seem to be getting little coverage, although Richard Norton-Taylor does mention them in today's Guardian.

Update:

You can download Dannatt's speech, in full, here.

General Dannatt: Most Iraqi militants 'not bad people'

That's right, you heard him straight. The admirably forthright General Dannatt, the head of UK armed forces, has dropped another mini bombshell. The significance of it is presumably in direct inverse proportion to the attention it is getting. Here are his relevant comments:

The militants (and I use the word deliberately because not all are insurgents, or terrorists, or criminals; they are a mixture of them all) are well armed – probably with outside help, and probably from Iran.  By motivation, essentially, and with the exception of the Al Qaeda in Iraq element who have endeavoured to exploit the situation for their own ends, our opponents are Iraqi Nationalists, and are most concerned with their own needs – jobs, money, security – and the majority are not bad people.

This is a remarkable contrast with the prevalent Blair-Bush line of recent years, that we are ranged against towel-headed 'evil-doers,' 'Saddamites', 'deadenders' and, of course, foreign fighters. Instead, the General informs us that most  of the resistance are simply nationalists concerned about their needs and, I think one can reasonably infer, the needs of their country.

A well armed militant force, the majority of whom are not bad people. If one puts that together with the statistical evidence, that the majority (68%) of attacks are still directed against the occupation and that the resistance has the strong support of the Iraqi people, you have the reality of the 'insurgency' in Iraq. Not Islamofascists committed to the destruction of our way of life but an authentic, nationalist resistance, focused on expelling the occupiers and protecting their way of life from our imperialism.

And that's the opinion of the head of our armed forces.

Update 22 09 07:

You can download Dannatt's speech, in full, here. Note that his remarks as delivered differ very slightly  from the text above, although the meaning is not affected. Most notably, to 'jobs, money, security' Dannatt adds a fourth item: 'hope'.

The reasoning of the bully

Some interesting remarks in this story from the BBC:

Iran has drawn up plans to bomb Israel if it launches an attack on Iranian soil first, military officials say.

The deputy commander of Iran's air force said that in the "unlikely event" of an Israeli attack, Tehran could respond with air and missile raids.

So, Iran has stated that, if attacked, it would retaliate. It was also stated that it doesn't believe any attack is likely and so any retaliation is also unlikely.

The Israeli and US response to this:

Israel's foreign ministry said the comments were alarming and showed that the international community should take a "very firm stance" on Iran.

The US dismissed Iran's remarks as "unhelpful" and "not constructive".

So, according to the Israeli and the US Governments, Iran stating that it would retaliate if attacked is "alarming", isn't "helpful" or "constructive", and shows why 'we' need to be "firm" with Iran.

Yet only last year, according to Ha'aretz, President Bush stated that he would "understand" if Israel chose to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Strangely, this isn't "alarming", unhelpful or non-constructive.

This is the depth at which the Western political class operates: an affirmation by an official enemy of their intent to respond if attacked is itself considered a provocation - truly the reasoning of the bully.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (a news wire), incidentally, reports this with the simple (and irresponsible) headline: "Iran threatens to bomb Israel".

Update 21 09 07

A reader of this site, independently sent this letter to her local newspaper, addressing the same issue.

Dear Sir / Madam.

Can you tell me what was newsworthy about yesterday's article "Iran: We'll bomb Israel"?   All Iran said is that they would reply to any attack. Any country in the world would do the same. Why, oh Metro, are you helping to build the UK and US "case" for war against Iran? Have you forgotten the lies which led to 700,000 dead Iraqis?

Yours,
[xxxx]

John Bolton: Authentic contempt

There are some people who require little editorial: their words are helpfully transparent. The reliably irascible and objectionable John Bolton is one of them. One can argue that he lacks formal position at the moment but his ideological proximity to the men in power is surely not in question. He deserves our attention. 

Speaking on today’s The World At One (which you can listen to for the next week or so here) about Gen. Petraeus’ forthcoming report to Congress about the results of the ‘Iraq Surge’, Bolton was his usual candid self. When discussing the prospect that the report would be optimistic, the following exchange with presenter Martha Kearney was telling:

Martha Kearney: “If he [Petraeus] is optimistic, won’t that be contradicted by the feelings of Iraqi people on the ground? The BBC poll showing that people believe that security has actually got worse?”

Bolton: “With all due respect, I don’t think your poll means a thing in the United States. I’m not sure I would put much reliance on it. But, in any event -”

Kearney “[cutting in]: Well, it means a great deal in Iraq doesn’t it?”

Bolton: “Iraq doesn’t vote in the United States Congress and I think what the members of the House and Senate are going to want to know is what the prospects are for American military people, whose lives are at risk...”

Bolton is well known for being probably the least diplomatic of the Neocon (chicken)hawks (he vies with Richard Perle for that title) but his clarity is instructive and should be attended to by those who still hold to the fluffy idea that Iraqis have a say in the presence of foreign troops in what remains of their country. Clearly they do not. Nor does their opinion on 'the surge' -that it has been a failure- matter. Equally unimportant are their massive losses -instead Congress is concerned only with the comparatively trivial matter of the welfare of American forces. 

The contempt in Bolton is palpable -something else that all ‘decent’ people must strive to forget if they are to stay faithful to the cause.

Update: 19.00

Well, the former ambassador is really spoiling us. Only a few hours after his appearance on The World at One, John Bolton was back on Radio 4’s PM (listen here for up to a week, approximately 15 minutes in). This time he was discussing today’s deportation of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia -presumably on the orders of US pal, General Musharraf.

Eddie Mair: “But if the administration wants to spread democracy wherever it can, ah, and Mr. Sharif is, by, by common consent, a democrat and Mr. Musharraf’s history is obviously well known, shouldn’t there be a little more support for Mr. Sharif?”

John Bolton: “That depends in part on what the administration’s policy on democracy really is. As I say, I’m just expressing my own point of view here and the fact is that when you’re dealing with a fragile, obviously unstable situation in a country that has a substantial nuclear arsenal, I come down on the side of protecting against the risk that nuclear weapons fall into the wrong hands.”

Mair: “It means though, doesn’t it, that Mr. Musharraf can behave in this way, and probably much worse, and still carry on with the support of the US?”

Bolton: “Well, in fact, we also need Musharraf’s support in the continuing campaign against al-Qaeda and our ongoing efforts to catch Osama bin Laden who, by most accounts, is somewhere in Waziristan or somewhere along that border with Afghanistan.”

Mair: “So does that take priority over democratization?”

Bolton: “Of course”

[4 second pause]

Mair: “Why?”

Bolton: “Er, because America has to focus on its strategic interest and our strategic interests in Pakistan are, one, assuring stability of command and control over the nuclear weapons arsenal. Er, two, eliminating the remaining al Qaeda and Taliban bases and personnel in Pakistan; and three, trying to ensure that there’s no war between Pakistan and India that could well escalate into a nuclear conflict. I’d like to see the spread of democracy everywhere but I think that you have to keep your priorities straight.”

Mair: “Pretty dismal picture for the tens of millions of Pakistanis.”

Bolton: “Well I suppose to what they’ve been doing since independence from Britain.”

 

Of course the US focuses on its strategic interests. To someone as unschooled in ‘diplomatic’ language as Bolton, it’s obvious. What’s more important is that journalists are able to forget this whenever they have to believe in ‘democratization’.

It’s a banal point but I’ll make it anyway. It is ‘strategic interests’ (a notion that, for the sake of brevity, I won’t unpack here) that govern US policy on Pakistan. It’s strategic interests that govern the US decision to continue imposing themselves on the Iraqis. So why will so many people still argue that is was anything other than strategic interests that took the US into Iraq in the first place?

Inured to obscenity

Sometimes, you have to take a step back, take a breath, and centre yourself in the whirlwind. That's the only way you can deal with the storm of hypocrisy, deceit, doublethink, and self-delusion that passes for political discourse in this country.

Today's headline on the BBC website is a rancid masterpiece:

"Iraqis fail US Congress targets"

I'm not even going to bother discussing the article, which describes Iraq's 'failure' to meet the various benchmarks laid out by Congress. To do so would be to accept the terms of a mendacious and utterly false debate. Instead, I can only marvel at the shamelessness of it all: that our media can be so debased, so void of basic moral sense that such a headline could be conceived of, let alone published.

After 'genocidal' sanctions, after WMD, after 'reconstituted nuclear weapons', after 'shock and awe', after 'we don't do body counts', after 100,000, after Abu Ghraib, after Fallujah, after 600,000, after outbreaks of cholera and with the US army continuing to hack at the crippled wreck of a nation: after all our lies and deceits, it is they who have failed us.

A different kind of blitz

Today’s Sunday Times throws more crude propaganda at us to condition public opinion for an attack on Iran. In 'Pentagon "three-day blitz" plan for Iran', Sarah Baxter writes that ‘The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.' Baxter then goes on to make her own little contribution to smoothing the way. She notes, for example, that

‘The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power.’

Not only does Iran maintain it but so does the IAEA in its report. There is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and, crucially, no evidence of ‘diversion’ of nuclear material. Note also that ‘Washington’ (ie the Bush Administration) is taken at its word -the Times reports it as ‘fearing’ rather than ‘claiming to fear’. Nor is there any mention that Iran is exercising its legal rights within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

‘Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”’

The Times does not see fit to mention that Jafarzadeh is a Washington insider with close links to the anti-Iranian Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), which the US lists as a terrorist group. Jafarzadeh heads the blandly named Strategic Policy Consulting Inc., an organisation that some believe was set up to circumvent the laws prohibiting the existence of the MEK on US soil. As I’ve written before, according to ABC News, Jafarzadeh is credited with having aired Iranian military secrets in the past but US officials ‘considered some of his past assertions inaccurate’ (indeed, NCRI's claim to have discovered Natanz is questionable).

The MEK are, reportedly, being used by the US at the moment as a terrorist proxy within Iran (after officially taking an oath to democracy, apparently). In other words, Jafazadeh is closely linked with an organisation long engaged in armed conflict with Iran and currently working for the US. The Times feels no need to mention any of this in order to let the reader judge his credibility. For anyone with a nagging sense of de ja vu, just think ‘Ahmed Chalabi’. It's another classic example of what in Public Relations is known as the 'Third Party Technique' -have your message come out of as many apparently unconnected and (ideally) apparently disinterested sources as possible.

‘Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, irritated the Bush administration last week by vowing to fill a “power vacuum” in Iraq. But Washington believes Iran is already fighting a proxy war with the Americans in Iraq.’

Ahmadinejad’s comments are edited for effect. In fact, what he said was ‘Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap, with the help of neighbours and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation.’ Which sounds rather less threatening, so needs to be edited. Washington’s beliefs are once more presented without comment -not even the obvious one, that there’s no evidence to support them. Again, there is no mention that, with its aid to the MEK, the US is likely already fighting a proxy war with Iran in Iran.

Bush noted that the number of attacks on US bases and troops by Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months  “despite pledges by Iran to help stabilise the security situation in Iraq”.

Once again, US allegations are presented as fact. Bush did not ‘note’ -he alleged. They do not mention, for instance, that even the British Foreign Secretary conceded recently that there is no evidence of Iranian complicity in Iraqi attacks on British forces -who are the ones closest to the Iranian border. Nor is there any mention that, the last time the Bush Administration span this line in a big way, in March 2006, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs himself came out and claimed that he knew of no evidence of Iranian involvement. The Times further endorses the Bush view of the world with the next line of the article: ‘It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the Iranians.’ Once again, the official line is swallowed whole and US Government is assumed to be honest, transparent and straightforward in its stance towards Iran. There is no mention of Iraq, for example, as if the US’s recent track record of outright lies and deception have no bearing on their allegations against Iran. They simply did not happen. Nor is there even a hint that what the US Government is apparently contemplating is a monstrous and entirely criminal act. Instead we get the usual recitation, distortion, suppression and insinuation. It's a different kind of blitz but it's just as lethal.